Who Makes Vessels of Wrath?

I am finding still more interesting clues about God's attitude toward the wicked and the righteous in Romans chapter 9. I find that when I read it and it still disturbs me that the very tension of being disturbed about what I am reading is the incentive to ask questions. And asking questions creates the very environment more conducive to learning and changing my thinking at a deeper level. Feeling disturbed actually engages the emotional side of the brain which is very important to changing deep-seated assumptions and beliefs at a more important level. It creates a more effective opportunity to make changes in my thinking that are more fundamental and longer-lasting if I take advantage of that opportunity by pursuing light and truth to resolve these tensions.

What comes to my attention this morning is verse 18 and verses 22 and 23. These verses seem to be saying very much the same thing in many ways and is part of the tension that underlies centuries of arguments and debates. I believe truth is consistent and I don't buy the idea that problems or issues that have been debated by theologians over the ages cannot be solved by simple lay persons. This is not a statement made in a spirit of arrogance. The Bible teaches that the Spirit of God knows exactly the mind of God and is available to anyone who is humble and willing to be taught the things of God if they will take the time and energy to search and pray for answers and insight. I do not believe in always looking to theologians for the final word on answers about God. That is the world's way of thinking – that only the “experts” have enough credibility to be believed and counted on to come up with definitive solutions to difficult problems. That kind of thinking has produced the fractures and divisions and confusion that we see in religion of all kinds today. Depending on so-called experts or human-appointed “authorities” is not the way to arrive at unifying truth.

The only way that God's people will ever come into unity, both of heart and of thinking, is by listening to and being led by the one Spirit who has been sent to teach us all things and empower every individual to take their proper place in the mysterious body of Christ. We cannot formulate the body of Christ by our own machinations or denominations. The body of Christ will only be connected together when each person who has submitted to be led by the Spirit of God listens to and obeys that Spirit. And the Bible, the word of God, has been given to test the spirits so that we do not need to be deceived by an imitation of the true Spirit. For all imitations of the true Spirit are lying spirits calculated to create division and drive a wedge between our hearts and the passionate heart of God.

So, I got a little off on a tangent there. But sometimes I need to remind myself of what is important and the environment in which I need to stay to unravel some of the difficult things I am looking at.

I decided to again go back and check the original language to look for clues in these verses and I did find some. Even in the current translation there are some good clues if I read it with the right preconceptions about God in place. For instance, I notice that in verse 18 that the common denominator of God's relating to the two classes of people is His desire.

So then He has mercy on whom He desires, and He hardens whom He desires. (Romans 9:18)

Some questions come to mind at this point that have to do with assumptions that need to be exposed and challenged. Is God's mercy toward those in the first group in reaction to their predetermined classification or is God's mercy an expression of who He is and what He is consistently like irregardless of who we are or the choices we make? Likewise, is the hardening effect of God on the second class His real desire for them because of their predetermined lot in life or is it simply a description of the effect that is seen in their life – like fire hardening a piece of clay?

And notice that the last part of each of these descriptions says the same thing – He desires. Is it really safe to leap to the assumption that His desire for one group is the opposite of His desire for the second group. To answer yes to that question is to betray deep, fundamental suspicions in our heart about God that resonate very much with the ideas entrenched in us that come from the father of lies and the archenemy of God. That should not surprise us since we are all infected with these lies due to our condition of being part of the fallen human race. But these false assumptions about God should not be allowed to go unchallenged and unexamined when trying to interpret the word of God.

I believe that Scripture teaches that God's desire is that everyone would be saved in heaven and live with Him in His love eternally. And that even includes Pharaoh himself! I believe it is inconsistent with the rest of Scripture to assume from this passage that God intends for some to be lost and others to be saved. That is to charge God with being arbitrary and overriding people's freedom to make a free choice of their own. This needs to become settled in the mind before one can go any further in understanding what Paul is really trying to convey in these verses.

So if God's desire is for everyone to be redeemed, to come to repentance and to be transformed back into His image, and if He fiercely protects the right of every intelligent being to have a free choice in determining their own destiny, then what is with the mercy and the hardness? I believe that it becomes evident that the mercy or hardness is simply a description of what is experienced by each person based on their own decisions of how they are going to respond to God's desire for them and the picture of God that they cling to.

Some might insist that verse 16 is saying the very opposite of this. But again, it all depends on our pre-assumptions about God as to what we will see in these verses. I also think we need to keep in mind that the translators of the Bible also wove in a certain amount of their own preconceptions about God in the words they chose to express what they believed Paul was trying to say. It is impossible to translate anything from one language to another without introducing at least a little bit of the translator's bias and that becomes one of the factors that needs to be remembered in unraveling some of the confusion that we see here. As I mentioned in a previous post about verse 16, it can be seen to really be saying that God's mercy is not dependent on anything we do or choose but is simply a description of what He is like. I think that this concept can be seen to be consistent throughout this whole passage if it is considered carefully.

Now I would like to mention one more thing I uncovered in looking at verses 22 and 23.

What if God, although willing to demonstrate His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction? And He did so to make known the riches of His glory upon vessels of mercy, which He prepared beforehand for glory. (Romans 9:22-23)

There is a lot that can be said about these verses. As far as the issue of wrath goes (which is where much of the confusion about this passage comes from in the first place) I would say that I have already covered this several times, particularly in my study of Romans 1 where it first shows up. That understanding of what is really meant by God's wrath is crucial to properly understanding the other places where it shows up throughout the Bible.

But what I did look for in these verses was the meaning behind the words “prepared” used in both verses and for both classes of people. When I went back and looked up the Greek that was used to arrive at these words I noticed something very significant. The original Greek words used for the same English word “prepared” in both of these verses is not the same. While they may be very similar they have notable differences. The original word used in verse 22 simply conveys the idea of “maturing” or completion. It does not necessarily carry the notion of being predetermined ahead of time like the word used for the second verse does. The “ahead of time” idea in verse 23 does come through even in the English as the word “beforehand” and I believe is quite significant.

Since God already knows from eternity what our choices and destiny is going to be, He can make His plans ahead of time to take that into account, yet still without imposing any sort of coercion on us to make those choices. I discussed this a bit in some of my recent posts on this passage. Really this whole passage is made more difficult because of our general inability to be able to comprehend how God can know our destiny ahead of time without unfairly using that information either against us or to our unfair advantage. That is due to the fact that it is extremely difficult to imagine a God who is free of our penchant to take advantages for ourselves in any way possible. We have such strong bias's due to our natural selfishness that it is nearly impossible for us to imagine what a totally unselfish God – or person for that matter – would think like.

But God does not think like we do and He does not use His power or advantages to manipulate circumstances in any way that could ever be considered to be unfair to anyone. That truth will ultimately be fully revealed at the final day of judgment, but until then we need to believe it by faith, trusting in a God who has our best interest in His heart all the time.

The reason that I think this difference is significant between the two verses is that it shows that God really does not predetermine anyone to become a “vessel of wrath”. No one is forced to become a vessel of wrath and become a lost sinner. Even the choice of the potter to make vessels for different uses in verse 21 does not state that some are designed to be vessels of wrath, it only states that some are designed for honorable use and others for common use. And in the Kingdom of Heaven everything is upside down to start with from what we are used to thinking. Jesus declared that those who wish to be the greatest in the Kingdom of God must learn to serve the most unselfishly and be most humble. So just because God may have formed a vessel for common use does not mean that He intended it to become a vessel of wrath. That comes about as a direct result of the choice made by the person themselves and becomes evident in the fruit of their responses to God's appeals to them.

What is seen throughout this passage and in other places is that the only real predestination that goes on in God's mind is His desire for everyone to be saved and to be restored into intimate relationship with Him. He knows that will not happen for everyone and He knows who will make what choices, but that knowledge in know way whatsoever changes His intense desire to capture our hearts anyway. God is love and cannot be anything in conflict with that love. God does not have a good and bad side to His personality. God is totally righteous and in Him there is no darkness at all.

The repeated emphasis that Paul keeps making throughout this passage is a focus on the true desire of God in contrast to the results that occur in the lives of those who resist His good desire for them. We are completely free to choose to accept His mercy and compassion and we are also completely free to resist Him and turn ourselves into vessels of wrath. God's foreknowledge in no way affects our freedom to make this choice, but His desire is always that we will choose His love.

However, if we do choose to cling to the lies about Him and believe that He is unfair, manipulative and coercive, we will end up experiencing the “wrath” that we imagine Him to have against us – not because it is true about Him but because the image that we cling to in our mind about what God is like produces the results of that image in our psyche. One of the important concepts found in a true understanding of His wrath is that He will reluctantly release us to the results of our own decisions. That is what explains the stark difference in reactions between those who love God and believe the truth about Him and those who are afraid of God and cling to their lies about Him as demonstrated at the Second Coming of Jesus. Notice which class cry out for the rocks and the mountains to fall on them and to hide them from His glory when He returns. And particularly notice the absurd description of Him that they exclaim in terror. They are terrified of the “wrath of the lamb”. Whoever in all of history was in grave danger from a wrathful lamb? How much worse can their mental illness become?

I do not want to make the choices or continue to harbor the beliefs inside of me that will cause me to have this kind of absurd paranoia. I want to be cleaned out of these lies and be filled with the beauty of God and experience the loveliness of His character and presence. I choose to trust in His continuing work inside of me to fit me as a vessel of mercy though which to make known the riches of His glory. Even so, do it Lord Jesus.

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